I finished Norwegian Wood. There were so many passages about sex and wanking and cumming in this it was crazy. Such a horny novel. But it was also a really sad book with lots of suicides and now I'm glum

In all seriousness though, I really want to give Murakami a go but I've heard his work is a little bit imperceptible and tough to digest. Are there any of his books you'd recommend to a first-time reader of his?

It's a very easy read I thought. Obviously it's translated from Japanese so there is that part of it where things are said and described that sound sort of weird. There's also some cultural stuff which is easy to forget, like the one scene where a 31 year old woman has almost sex with a 13 year old girl and the controversial part of that fact is that there was lesbianism, not the age.

I haven't read any of his other novels but I got Kafka on the Shore now so I will report back soon on how much wanking is in it.

However there are bits I like like when the kindly old lady invites Bev in for some tea and becomes less kindly and more gross and evil and slowly gets older and decrepit and becomes a witch. That's a proper creepy scene that will definitely get ruined by the movie sequel because they'll make it a jump scare

I really have bad luck with Stephen King. I try to read a decent amount but I never really went through a King phase. Only novel of his I ever read through was Salem's Lot which was uneven as ****. Good fun at parts but terribly disappointing ending. I dropped The shining halfway through but that was short.

This book is 1400 pages long and large parts of it feel like it's fumbling towards some amateurish stream of consciousness in the adult sections and some of the encounters with the IT demon are so strange that I find it hard to express visually in my brain.

There are parts I do enjoy but it's such a series of peak and throughs that it's like a rollercoaster but not in a good way.

I hear also that the kids have a gangbang at the end so maybe this is one of those cocaine novels where King forgets writing half of it and that's why it's so uneven.

I've had the same issue with King for years, he's brilliant at atmosphere, at building up the dread but he always loses the plot at the end and fecks it up.

My advice stick to James Herbert, yes he's a bit more graphic but his mid career stuff like Moon or Magic cottage are still great reads.

The goal of our culture now is not the emancipation of the individual from the group, but the permanent definition of the individual by the group.
We used to call this bigotry.
Now we call this being woke.

I'd read a couple of Danny Wallace's real life experience books (Join Me and Yes Man) and this is his first novel.

Its a rambling search for a girl from a chance encounter, and meaders around before a predictable conclusion. Couple of high points, his mate works on a retro games shop so some gaming references, and the bit about Postman Park was interesting too.

Soon to be a James Franco film, it's a book about The Room by Greg Sestero who played Mark in the film

It's a bit clunky and drags but very interesting. Tommy Wiseau seems like such a sad lost soul.

Apparently they spent hours filming that 'I did NAHT hit her' and 'what a story mark' scene because he kept forgetting his lines. They had to give him a prop (a water bottle) just so he could finish the scene. This is probably why there's so many scenes with characters playing with footballs and stuff in the film. Also he would not stop laughing whenever Mark described the scene with the lady getting beat. The director kept telling Tommy he should be concerned, not laugh at it. But he laughed every time.

Such a weird guy and makes you wonder what's going on there. Apparently a multi-millionaire yet no-one knows where he made his money. No-one knows his real age (estimated to be about early 40s at the time of The Room but he pretends he is much younger).

edit: I haven't finished the book but watching that scene again just makes it seem like he hates women or something.

Kazuo Ishiguro got the Nobel Prize for literature. I've only read Remains of the Day but anyone else read some of his stuff?

Remains of the Day is from the POV of a butler who's lived a wasted life. Anthony Hopkins played the part in the film but I haven't seen it. Apparently his last book was fantasy which is super surprising to me.

Just learned out of nowhere that Philip Pullman has a new His Dark Materials book out just today

The first books were very good books to read during the sensitive ages of 11-15 as they were all about puberty and adolescence and growing up and stuff. I definitely connected more with them than I did Harry Potter, which was basically just hormones and magic. It's been so long that I don't know whether this new book will be something I can read but definitely interested.

Yeah for the first time in my life I actually pre-ordered a book when I heard that was coming out. Amazon gave me a heads up it's been delivered but I'm half way through a book at the minute and don't have the attention span for two books at once so it'll have to wait a few days.

Also, I read through His Dark Materials about 12 months ago - they were still fantastic and I noticed so much more subtext within them that I hadn't picked up on when I was younger. Things like gay characters, the gypsies (aka Gyptians. I honestly just thought it was short for Egyptians, especially because they used canals and boats, a la The Nile), all of the religious stuff - which in fairness I did pick up on, I just never noticed how overt it was.

Going back as an adult I still think it's an incredible series, although admittedly that could be because I hold them in such reverence in the first place.

I'm going to a talk he's doing in Liverpool next month too. He's got signings and talks all around the country and I'm really tempted to dig out my copy of The Amber Spyglass so I can ask him to sign it for me. As it stands I probably won't risk taking it out of the house, but will be taking The Book of Dust with me!

Fun Fact: I actually went to Oxford earlier this year with the wife and sprog. We had a couple of hours to kill on the Sunday morning so I convinced her to go to the Botanical Gardens. I got some pictures of, and some pictures on, Will and Lyra's bench. That was an awesome moment.